


By the Dawn's Early Light

by riverlight



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Backstory, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-07-30
Updated: 2006-07-30
Packaged: 2017-10-26 17:35:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/286055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/riverlight/pseuds/riverlight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Teyla and John and an early-morning conversation. <i>To choose exile that way—to become a refugee without need—this she does not understand. </i></p>
            </blockquote>





	By the Dawn's Early Light

The sun is just slipping over the horizon when Teyla steps onto the balcony, a sudden shimmer of golden light against the pale blue of the sky and the darker blue of the ocean. The air is clear and sweetly salt-smelling, and a breeze from the west is ruffling white foam on the water that laps at the city's buttresses, a contented murmur of water and air. She has learned to love this ever-changing vista of sea and sky, in the months since she arrived here; this wide blue expanse of water is like nothing she has ever known, and yet she finds its vastness strangely comforting.

This has become ritual: she rises early, as is her habit, and takes her tea to this small south-facing balcony to feel the sun on her face. She is accustomed to rising just before dawn; on Athos her people would often gather in the misty dimness of early morning for a cup of hot tea, dispersing to their day's tasks when the sun's first light came over the horizon. She has maintained that habit even now that she is alone in the city; her body has adapted surprisingly easily to the longer Atlantean day, and she has always liked mornings in any case, so she brews enough for just herself and takes it outside, where she draws the morning blessings with her fingers in the steam rising from her cup since she lacks the smoke of a hearth-fire. It's not quite the same, but it is a tangible link to home, and it affords her no small measure of peace.

Behind her, the doors hiss open, and she turns, startled. The Atlanteans have not adapted as well as she to this new world's diurnal rhythms, and most mornings she has the wide hallways to herself for long enough to go to and return from the exercise rooms without seeing more than one or two others. The city is never entirely deserted—there are always Marines on duty in the gateroom and in the halls leading to the living quarters, and sometimes the occasional scientist too absorbed in some problem to sleep—but all the same, she rarely sees anyone before she goes in search of food, and it is rarer still for someone to come in search of her here.

It is Sheppard— _John,_ she corrects herself. "Teyla," he says in his slow voice. It's neither question or statement; he sounds as surprised to see her as she is him.

"John," she says in return, and smiles at him. It's early, but he's neatly dressed, in the simple grey uniform the Atlantean military seems to favor.

He pauses in the doorway. "You mind company?" he asks, gesturing towards her, and she moves farther down the balcony in answer, making space for him to join her at the railing.

"You are awake early," she says, after a moment of silence. He's gazing out to sea, face inscrutable as she has come to recognize is usual with him, but when she speaks he turns to her and smiles.

"Yeah, I guess," he says easily. "Nice morning, though."

"Yes," she agrees. They stand in silence for a few minutes, gazing out at the water. The sun has risen a full hand-span over the horizon, gilding the ripples of cloud that are floating there, and a flock of tiny seabirds is swooping and diving in the distance. She wonders what he thinks of this place—from what she has heard, most of the Atlanteans had never been to other planets before, and many of them had not even known of the existence of the Ancestors. She wonders what it was like, that knowledge, after having imagined themselves alone in space; even the simplest societies she has visited have known of travel between the stars, even if only in myth and story.

"Did I ever tell you I grew up near the ocean?" he says suddenly.

Teyla raises her eyebrows; he has not told her this. She has heard stories from Rodney of childhood in a place called Canada, which is, she gathers, quite cold—though not nearly so cold as a place called Siberia—and quite civilized, and _"definitely, definitely not to be confused with America,"_ and she knows of Ronon's life on Sateda, of course, but of John's life she has learned very little beyond small details. "Oh?" she says, curious. She glances at him out of the corner of her eye. He is leaning against the railing, arms braced, somehow more relaxed than she is accustomed to seeing him.

"Yeah," he says. "Pretty similar to here, actually, though a little warmer. I used to ride my bike down to the beach when I was supposed to be doing homework and go crab-fishing instead. Never caught anything, but it was always fun." He pauses for a moment, then looks at her, grinning. "I was totally blond as a kid, can you imagine? Spent so much time in the sun."

She imagines a smaller version of John, rough-and-tumble and easy-going, tow-headed and sunburnt and grinning—everything else he's said, like so much of what the Atlanteans refer to casually, is unknown to her, but that image at least she can see clearly. She smiles.

"Do you miss it?" she asks. That is another thing she wonders; how must it feel to be so far from home that there is no easy way to return. They are luckier than many she knows—they still have a link, if precarious, to their homeworld, a way to reach out and connect, however briefly, with the ones they've left behind. They still have a world to return to. But that it is all-but-inaccessible by gate makes it feel somehow more distant—even Sateda is reachable in an instant, if Ronon wanted to go, and her people just as close. John—he came here, having no idea what it would be like, with the assumption that he might never return. To choose exile that way—to become a refugee without need—this she does not understand.

"Do I miss it?" he repeats. He looks thoughtful. "I mean… yeah, I miss it. Not so much the places—" he gestures vaguely at the ocean in front of them—"because we moved around a lot; I never really had one place I called home. I don't even miss the conveniences much, really." He looks at her and grins his easy slow grin. "I mean, don't get me wrong—some days I'd kill for good Chinese food, or, I don't know, soap that isn't made from something they dug up down in Botany." She grins back; the soap is something of a running joke at this point. "But—" John pauses for a moment, choosing his words. "Mostly what I miss is—well, this might sound strange, but—I miss all the history, you know?"

"History?" Teyla asks. She would not have imagined John to be particularly interested in the exploits of the past.

"Mm, not history like battles and stuff," he says, "though," he adds, "Gettysburg was pretty damn cool, I always liked that as a kid—but—well, I I know where I come from back on Earth, you know? Four hundred years ago we came over from England on little wooden ships, and a while after that we won Independence, and there was the Trail of Tears and the Civil War, and the Roaring Twenties and the Depression and a couple of world wars in there, and we went to the moon and knocked down the Wall and now we've come to another galaxy—" He's suddenly very intent, and Teyla can feel the force of his emotion but beyond that does not recognize the meaning behind the litany of events.

"I do not understand, John," she says, and he sighs, frustrated.

"It's just—I'm American, right?" he says. He taps the flag sewn onto the shoulder of his uniform. "And McKay's Canadian, and Radek's Czech, and I get that, I understand that. I mean, I don't know much about the Czech Republic at all, but I have some sense of what makes Radek different from me, right?"

Teyla nods.

"And on Earth it's easy," he says. "You just have this sense of what makes the people the way they are. For us it was, oh, I don't know, the Puritans, and 'Go West, Young Man,' and the American Dream, right? The sense that anything is possible. And it's not something you talk about, but you _know_ it, and I don't have anything like that here." He scrubs a hand through his hair. "I mean, really, Teyla, the Ancients? I have no idea what they were like. We run around thinking they're the good guys, but we don't know, really, and that's just them—there are thousands of cultures just a step away through the Gate, and I have no idea who they are, what gods they worship, what their myths say. We're rootless here, Teyla."

She thinks of her own sense of rootlessness, her feeling of being adrift, torn between two cultures. "It is true, I think," she says at last. "That sense of connectedness is necessary." She gestures to herself, to the grey uniform she too wears, with the sold green square that she chose to represent Athos on her shoulder, and he tilts his head in acknowledgment.

"All right, fair enough," he says. "How do you guys do it, living without a permanent home?"

The sun is high above the horizon now, a brilliant gold in the deep blue sky. Somewhere out of sight, beyond where sky meets sea, her people are coming out of their tents, looking at the sky to gauge the weather, setting off for the fields; or they're inside, cooking, weaving, praying, taking care of the children. Maybe she can get Carson or Rodney to fly her over, later—

"I do not know, John," she says. "We do what we have always done. That is enough."

He nods. They stand in silence another moment. Finally, Teyla turns to go; her tea is long cold. John grabs her arm. "Hey," he says, "I'll see you at lunch?" He sounds hesitant.

"Yes," she says. She musters up a smile. "Cheese sandwiches today, right?"

"Yeah," he says. "All right, go. I'll see you later. I'm just gonna—" He makes a vague gesture with his hand. "—Stay here a while, I think."

"All right." she says. The doors hiss open for her and she is surrounded by the sudden coolness of Atlantis' climate-regulated air, the muted hum of the city replacing the lapping of the water against the walls outside.

It has been a gift in her life that she has learned no curse comes without its answering blessing. She may have lost part of her past when they left the forests of home, but she, and John as well, she suspects, have gained something just as precious—a sense of the future. _The sense that anything is possible._ Teyla walks through the still-empty hallways of Atlantis, and smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this for a challenge back in 2006. And I remember clearly choosing _not_ to post it to my journal, feeling it wasn't my best work.
> 
> And it definitely isn't. But as I sit here in late 2011 uploading stories to the AO3, I realize I actually like it more than I remembered. And since I'm a completist—well, here it is. :)


End file.
